THE \ . : l' .,--- - :: ::: H J'\\\\ *. . r,.. '11 ' 0 0 . · 0 . " . '.,-.."- THE. TALI( OF THE TOWN Notes and Comm('nt D RAWN up before the Fifth Avenue Bank was an old, old Pierce-gen teel, high, the ve- hicle of a Fine Old Family. Front and rear were affixed twin metal shields: UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION. It was a substantial scene: the car, the bank, the chauffeur waiting to spread the robe over the knees that still knew their own strength. We continued on around the corner and ascended to our own untidy loft. Looking out a moment later, our eye again swept the Fifth Avenue Bank, 1\ # ( this time from above. Flying from it on a clothesline, plain as plain could be, was a little pair of lady's drawers-pink as the eye of Russia. O UR life would be a drab thing were it not for the vivid material which we receive all the time from romantic press bureaus, to whom life is rich and charming and real. We get dally bul- letins from night clubs, health resorts, radio stations, hotel bars, dry-cleaning establishments, publishers, railroad and steamship lines, and a hundred other concerns and enterprises. They tone us up and keep us alert and informed. One of our most faithful correspondents is a man who describes himself as News from Lake Placid in-the-Adirondacks. We have no doubt mentioned his letters before. Not a drop of snow Jalls, not a sled turns over, but we know about it in great detail. Today comes an Adi- rondack announcement to the effect that July 4th is the date of the opening of the midsummer indoor ice season. It makes us realize how the world changes. Once upon a time (and this will come as a surprise to News from Lake Placid in-the-Adirondacks) we spent a summer working as a caddy in Lake Placid in-the-Adirondacks. Long afternoons we sat in the caddy house and learned about life from the town boys. In those days July 4th wasn't the beginning of the:> ice season-it was thé day the black flies came out of the woods onto the eleventh fairway and held their Annual War Games. The only indoor ice in those days was in the tall glasses of the golf players from whom we used to get 35 cents for nine holes, 70 cents (with 5-cent tip) for eighteen holes. ANOTHER regular correspondent n of ours is the French Line, which built a dinghy named the Normandie a year ago and recently has been adding on to her to put her in the big-boat class. French Line news is always glamor- ous to us-full of good living, smooth sailing, Brie cheese, handsome interiors, moonlit decks, and people in white ties. We know practically everything there is to know about the Normandie, for we -are a careful reader and never throw away a news story till it has had its way with us. v'l e know that a full-sized ten- nis court has been installed between the second and third funnels, and we know that for acoustical reasons an ortho- phonic she!] has been added to the stage of the theatre (the shell opens down the middle and out pops the Queen Mary). The latest bulletin, though, is on the whole disappointing. It hasn't got glamour . It lets us down. It says that in addition to radiophones in the de-luxe suites a petit salon has been in- stalled on the promenade deck which will "enable a whole family to gather for the radiophone conversation." No sir, this hasn't got glamour. It hasn't got the old French Line touch. We've been in on wholesale phone conversa- tions in which the whole family takes part, and they were a little less than fascinating. Life does not touch zenith for us in a ship-to-shore free-for-all family conversation. Give us an old Liggett's phone booth. It may smell of last year's grippe germs, but it is all, all our own. M AY DAY, which in a happier spring would find maidens on a green lawn dancing around a pole, brings now to the heart only parades, fear, and con- fused evidence of disjointedness. When we would engage our fancy with daf- fodils on the lea, we must instead re- solve world economy. The nub of the woe is unemployment. One cause of unemployment is the labor-saving ideal, to which we appear to be committed- to which, anyway, there has been curi- ously little opposition, considering the havoc it has wrought. The people grad- ually approach a state of 100-per-cent mechanical ingenuity and 100-per-cent manual idleness. The desirability of such a state has been questioned, but nev- er boldly enough. It should be more thoroughl y probed. There is dulcet ap- peal in a society of leisure, in which creature comforts would be supplied by machinery and man would give all his